Part 17 (1/2)
”I did,” Lady Middles.e.x said. ”I'm Lady Middles.e.x, the wife of the British high commissioner in Mesopotamia. My husband has represented the British Crown all over the world. I know poison when I see it.”
”And what poison would that be?”
”Why, cyanide, of course. Red face, staring eyes and the odor of bitter almonds. A cla.s.sic case. I saw it once before in the Argentine.”
Patrascue turned back to me. ”Did you see somebody administer this poison?”
”No. I saw n.o.body come near the table except the servers and Count Dragomir.”
Dragomir made a coughing noise in his throat and said, ”I resent the implication that I was somehow involved in this farce. Why would I want to kill a man I had never met before? It is my duty to make sure all servers perform flawlessly. Naturally I was standing behind the table, in a position where I could watch them all.”
”And yet you saw nothing amiss?” Patrascue asked.
”The men performed flawlessly as always.”
”We have no idea how the poison was administered,” Nicholas said. ”I sat beside him. All food and drink was served from the same platters and carafes and with great speed. It would have been impossible to select a poisoned morsel for a particular person.”
”Then I would suggest that it was placed in his gla.s.s before the meal,” Patrascue said smugly.
”But we were told cyanide acted almost immediately,” I said. ”The field marshal had cleared his plate, had second helpings and had his winegla.s.s filled countless times from the same carafe as everybody else.”
”If the poison was indeed cyanide,” Patrascue said. ”I take it no doctor was present to make an accurate diagnosis. Amateurs are frequently wrong in my experience.”
”There is no physician in the castle, unfortunately,” Anton said. ”But I have studied a bit of medicine at the University of Heidelberg and I can tell you that the telltale odor of bitter almonds was present and the face was flushed.”
”Ah, a so-called expert,” Patrascue said. ”It is unfortunate that the body has already been transported away from the castle, or I myself could have determined what poison had been administered. I hope that somebody had the sense to put aside the utensils this person used at the dinner table. I shall send them off for testing and then we shall know.”
”They did and they have been taken with the body to be examined by a competent laboratory,” Nicholas said. I thought I detected a note of glee in his voice. ”Naturally we didn't expect a trained policeman like yourself to arrive so soon, given the condition of the pa.s.s.”
”Ah.” Patrascue tried to come up with a response to something that might have been a compliment. ”Then the next step is to interview those who served the meal. Count Dragomir, you are in charge of the running of this place, are you not?”
”You know very well that I am,” Dragomir replied curtly. No love lost between those two, I thought.
”Then please be good enough to have those men who served at dinner brought to the library instantly for questioning.”
”If we do that, then word will spread around the castle rather rapidly that the field marshal is dead, and probably murdered. That is the last thing we want at this moment,” Nicholas said. ”The men were questioned discreetly last night.”
”And it is as I told Their Highnesses,” Dragomir said. ”These are all local men, simple men who have been in the service of this castle for most of their lives. Why would any of them want to poison a foreign field marshal, even if they had the means to do so?”
”Money,” Patrascue said. ”Enough money can persuade a man to go against his conscience and to perform in a most ruthless manner. How many footmen were there serving at dinner last night?”
”There were twelve,” Dragomir said. ”But we would only be concerned with those who served the field marshal. Those who waited on the other side of the table would never have come near him.”
”Ah, I see.” Patrascue nodded jerkily. ”And it would be impossible to lean across this table?”
”Any servant who leaned across a table would be instantly dismissed,” Dragomir said. ”Our standards of etiquette are of the very highest.”
”I will speak with these men, one at a time,” Patrascue said. ”I will swear them to secrecy. They know enough of my reputation to realize what would happen to them if they were rash enough to lie to me or to break their vow. And if one of them has accepted money to commit this heinous act, then I shall make him confess, I promise you.” He smiled unpleasantly. I noticed his teeth were unnaturally pointed.
”Of course we could have made a mistake all along,” Anton said in a different, breezy voice. ”As you say, we are only amateurs. Perhaps we were misinterpreting what was only a simple heart attack after all. It was this lady who suggested that she smelled the odor of bitter almonds, and we know that ladies are inclined to be hysterical in the presence of a body.”
”I absolutely resent-” Lady Middles.e.x began. I kicked her hard, under the table. She looked at me in astonishment and shut up.
”As soon as the car bearing Field Marshal Pirin's body reaches civilization we shall know the truth,” Anton went on smoothly. ”Why don't we wait until a competent physician has given his a.s.sessment of the situation? It would be a tragedy if false rumors leaked out to my country and a regional war began for nothing. It wouldn't make you look good either, if you started a witch hunt for something that turned out to be a simple heart attack.”
Patrascue stared at him, trying to a.s.sess the implications of what he was saying. There was a pitcher of water on the table. He reached forward, poured himself a gla.s.s and drank from it.
”There is something in what you are saying,” he said. ”I have no wish to destabilize this region or cause any unpleasantness with our neighbors at this moment of joy and celebration. We will await the doctor's opinion. But in the meantime I will keep my eyes and ears open. n.o.body will be above my scrutiny. n.o.body!”
He put down his empty gla.s.s firmly on the table. The partic.i.p.ants rose to their feet. Except for me. I was staring hard as if I were seeing a vision. I had just realized something that threw a whole new light onto this situation.
Chapter 23.
I stood staring at the table until the others had left. In my mind's eye I could visualize Field Marshal Pirin giving his drunken, rambling toast. He had reached for a gla.s.s, and he was holding it in his left hand. Hannelore had mentioned that his table manners were abysmal and he never used the correct fork. Apparently he didn't use the correct gla.s.s either. It was not his gla.s.s at all he had grabbed for, but Prince Nicholas's.
It took me a moment to grasp the implication of this. The intended murder victim was not Pirin at all, but Nicholas. And the reason Nicholas hadn't drunk his own wine and died was that he had switched to champagne when the toasts started and had not touched his red wine after that. This would indicate that the gla.s.s had originally been free of cyanide during the main course when Nicky was drinking red wine with the wild boar. Somehow, someone had introduced the cyanide after that, unfortunately not realizing that Nicholas was going to call for champagne for his toasts. And if someone had introduced the cyanide, it had to be one of the servers or Dragomir.
Wait a minute, I thought. I was discounting the other diners at the table. Pirin obviously wouldn't have put cyanide into a gla.s.s he was going to drink himself. On Nicholas's other side was his bride and she was hardly likely to want to kill off her bridegroom. Opposite him was his brother, Anton, and as Dragomir had said, it was frightfully bad form to reach across the table. It would have been noticed instantly. And besides, the brothers seemed to be on good terms. Anton wouldn't have wanted his brother dead. I paused, considering this. Anton had made jokes about not being the heir and having no purpose in life. Did he secretly wish that he'd be king someday and not his brother? And of all the people around, he would have had a knowledge of poisons. After all, he had told me that he was studying chemistry in Heidelberg. And he was the one who had persuaded Patrascue to do nothing for now. Which would give him ample time to dispose of any traces of cyanide if he needed to.
”Lady Georgiana!” Lady Middles.e.x's strident voice cut through my thoughts. ”Aren't you coming?”
”What? Oh-yes,” I stammered. Now there was the question of whom to tell. I wished that Darcy hadn't gone away.
Lady Middles.e.x grabbed my arm with her bony fingers. ”We must go somewhere to plan strategy.”
”Strategy?”
She looked around. ”Obviously we must make sure that everything is kept from that odious little policeman. We must work fast before he makes a complete mess of everything. Typical bungling foreigner. No clue how to run things properly. It is up to us now to unmask the murderer.”
”I don't see how we're ever going to do that,” I said. ”I was there, facing Field Marshal Pirin all the time. If it was Dragomir or one of the footmen who slipped the cyanide into the gla.s.s, he was very slick and I don't see how we'd ever find out who did it.”
”That's if it was Dragomir or one of the servants,” Lady Middles.e.x said knowingly. She drew me closer. ”Deer-Harte thinks she saw something. Of course, she is p.r.o.ne to flights of fancy, as we know.”
”I am an excellent observer, Lady M,” Miss Deer-Harte said, ”and I know what I saw.”
”What did you see, Miss Deer-Harte?” I asked.
Her face went pink. ”As you recall on the first night here I was not invited to join the company for dinner. Lady M thought it wouldn't be right for a mere companion. I was told my supper would be sent up to my room. But after a while I thought that it wasn't fair to one of the servants to have to walk up all these stairs with my tray, so I decided to come down and fetch it myself. Well”-she paused and looked around again-”as I pa.s.sed the banqueting hall I heard the sound of merry voices, so naturally I lingered and took a little peek inside.”
”This was the first night,” I interrupted. ”The night before Pirin was murdered.”
”It was, but what I saw could be significant. There was somebody watching from the shadows on the far side of the hall. He was dressed in black and he was standing half hidden behind one of the arches. He just stood there, not moving and watching. I thought it was odd at the time. I remember thinking, 'That young man is up to no good.' ”